Tuesday's Market Minute: #FreeTheBird

It’s been a busy few days since Elon Musk finalized his takeover of Twitter (TWTR) last Thursday after markets closed. Now, Twitter employees are faced with the potential upheaval of their jobs, and hundreds of millions of Twitter users around the world are grappling with potential platform policy changes.

“Chief Twit” Elon Musk seemingly remains committed to increasing free speech on the platform and to unlock Twitter’s “extraordinary potential”. And so far, he has done so through C-Suite layoffs at the social media company. Musk fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and policy head Vijaya Gadde last Thursday. He also fired Twitter’s general counsel Sean Edgett, according to reports. The $44B acquisition was the largest buyout of a tech company in history, and dumped about $13B in debt on the company. 

There are still rumors speculating that Musk informed prospective partners that he planned to layoff between 50-75% of Twitter’s 7,000-employee workforce, but this remains speculative. Musk denied a New York Times report that claimed he was laying off employees prior to November 1 to avoid to the stock grants due on that day. He responded to the alleged article through a tweet stating, “That is false”.

Last Friday, Musk announced plans via Tweet to establish a content moderation council, consisting of a committee with widely diverse viewports, noting that “No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes”. According to the Verge, this was in response to the hate speech on the platform that increased by nearly 500% last week compared to its previous average. Over a 48-hour-period, a small number of accounts flooded Twitter with slurs and derogatory terms. To illustrate the scale, more than 50,000 tweets repeatedly using the same slur came from just 300 accounts. Musk reportedly sent Tesla engineers to evaluate Twitter’s software code and shared these plans to form a council focused on content. 

On Monday, Musk acknowledged swirling rumors that former President Donald Trump will be returning to the platform, saying “If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if Trump is coming back on this platform, Twitter would be minting money!” Musk previously said he’d reestablish the former President’s account, but Trump has made it known he has allegedly no interest in returning to Twitter.

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